Kes
'''Kes was a female Ocampa who joined the after it was catapulted into the Delta Quadrant by the Caretaker's array. For over three years she became a valuable member of the crew; she served as a field medic, and was in charge of the airponics bay. She eventually left Voyager in order to explore her increasingly powerful mental abilities. ( , ) Childhood Kes was born on Ocampa in 2369. She belonged to a species that had telepathic abilities and a normal lifespan of only nine years. Kes' father, to whom she was very close and whom she considered the greatest inspiration in her life, died not long after her first birthday. She still thought about him and often felt his presence when she needed guidance. ( ) When she was born, her mother expressed a wish that she would one day see the sun. Like most Ocampa, Kes was brought up underground, as her planet's surface had became a barren wasteland due to a catastrophic event and was unsuitable for habitation. ( ) ]] About 500 generations ago, a race of explorers from a distant galaxy, called the Nacene, had inadvertently damaged the atmosphere of the planet so badly that all nucleogenic particles were lost, thus rendering the atmosphere incapable of producing rain. The Nacene deeply regretted what they had done and left two of their kind behind to protect and provide for the Ocampa. While the female Nacene settler left in order to further explore the galaxy, the male Nacene, known as the , stayed. He built a vast underground city, provided the Ocampa with food, entertainment and water from subterranean sources, as well as energy from the Array in space. The Ocampa civilization was sealed in by the Caretaker with a force barrier, and the ruling Elders were subsequently charged with discerning the wishes of the Caretaker, who had attained an almost godlike status among to the Ocampa. The Ocampa remained in this state for five hundred generations. Over the years, some had found a way to circumvent the energy barrier and reach the surface. They were part of a rebellious minority who wanted to explore other possibilities, and no longer wished to remain dependent on the Caretaker. Among them was Kes. She was frustrated that the Ocampa had been dependent on the Caretaker for so long that they couldn't even think for themselves anymore. She knew that before they had given up their independence for comfort and security, they had been a people with full command of their minds' abilities, abilities they had lost because they stopped using them and began to just take what they were given. Kes did not want to walk the path the Caretaker had set for her and other Ocampa anymore; she believed her people needed to evolve, and that they could only do so by learning to survive on their own and on their own terms. , after having been tortured by the Kazon]] Her yearning to see the outside world led her to leave the city in 2371 through some ancient tunnels. However, upon reaching the surface, she was captured by members of the Kazon-Ogla sect, who had established a camp near the city. There, she was mistreated and tortured for information regarding the entrance to the city. The Kazon were a crude and rather technologically deficient race and finding a way to the fruitful underground oasis of the Ocampa city would have provided them with abundant resources. During her time with the Ogla, she met the Talaxian Neelix and the two fell in love. Neelix promised to rescue her. He managed this with the aid of Captain Janeway's Voyager and Chakotay's Maquis crew that had been transported to the Delta Quadrant by the Caretaker's Array. In return, Kes agreed to help them retrieve crewmembers that had been sent to the Ocampa city for care, after the experiments the Caretaker had done on them. After the Array – which could have taken Voyager back to the Alpha Quadrant – had to be destroyed by Janeway so that the Ocampa would not fall victim to the ruthless Kazon, Kes and Neelix asked to join the Voyager crew on their journey, promising to serve the ship and its crew as valuable crewmembers. ( ) Aboard Voyager The first year As one of her first acts on Voyager, Kes volunteered to establish a hydroponics garden in cargo bay two in order to provide fresh fruits and vegetables to allow for more variety in meals for the crew. Her requirement of nitrogenated soil for her garden from sickbay started her friendship and sympathy with The Doctor. ( ) Shortly after joining the crew, Kes began to exhibit some of the mental powers her species had long since lost. She experienced a telepathic vision of the destruction of a nearby planet by a polaric ion explosion. She also started to exhibit temporal telepathy while investigating the disaster. Even after the explosion was averted and the timeline containing the disaster completely unraveled, an echo of her original vision remained. ( ) Kes quickly settled in to life aboard Voyager and began growing vegetables in her hydroponics bay. She also began to study medicine under The Doctor in order to become The Doctor's nurse. When Neelix was attacked by the Vidiians and they removed his lungs, she donated one of her own to save his life. After the operation, The Doctor allowed her to commence training to become his medical assistant. ( ) ( ) Soon Kes started to help The Doctor in sickbay. She was shocked at the way The Doctor was treated by the crew. After explaining the situation to Captain Janeway, the captain agreed with her. Janeway told The Doctor that he was a member of the crew and she gave him control of the deactivation of his program. The Doctor found Kes' intellectual curiosity intriguing, and in the course of instructing her in her medical studies, he postulated that Kes had an eidetic memory. ( ) With Kes acting as his medical assistant, this gave Voyager a physician that could act as a medic in cases where patients couldn't be immediately transferred to sickbay, also allowing The Doctor to be kept offline rather than be constantly activated to deal with any minor injuries. Despite her respect for his lessons, Kes also lectured The Doctor on his bedside manner; when The Doctor programmed a holographic "flu" to better his bedside manner, Kes secretly modified it to last longer than the expected duration, telling him that "it wouldn't be an effective lesson" if he knew when his illness would end. ( ) s in her airponics bay]] In late 2371, Voyager encountered a swarm of space-dwelling lifeforms whose presence resulted in increased electrophoretic activity in the atmosphere. At the same time, Kes began exhibiting strange behavior, such as developing a big appetite and eating copious amounts of food – from mashed potatoes, flowers, to the dirt from soil and even the bugs she used in her airponics bay for cross-pollination. Neelix caught her devouring a combination of these foods and was worried that she might have poisoned herself. She resisted being taken to sickbay, stating that she just couldn't stop eating. The Doctor examined her and discovered that she had an elevated temperature and increased electrophoretic activity. However, he was unsure as to what exactly was causing her symptoms. ]] Before long, Kes barricaded herself behind a force field in The Doctor's office, running a dangerously high fever and developing a growth on her back. Captain Janeway, whom Kes trusted the most, was called in. She explained to her that the growth on her back was the sac where her child would grow. She revealed that she was going through the Elogium, a time of change, during which her body prepared for fertilization. Janeway tried to explain to her that Humans go through a similar process called puberty, but Kes was panicking because she was simply too young for the Elogium, as it usually happened between the ages of four and five and she wasn't even two years old yet. As Janeway tried to console her, Kes pointed out that the Elogium only occurred once – and if she was ever going to have a child, it had to be now. This left Kes and Neelix with the tough decision of deciding whether to have a child. Neelix in particular was unsure whether he was ready to be a father, which in turn left Kes somewhat disappointed because she wanted to mate with him. Even though Kes later decided to not conceive, The Doctor believed that the Elogium was a false alarm, probably set in motion by the swarm they encountered, and that she was still able to conceive again at the right age. ( ) The second year In 2372, the Bothans attacked Voyager with a bio-electric field that caused the crew to experience hallucinations. It put the crew under some kind of psychoactive trance which disabled the ship. Kes' telepathic abilities allow her to resist the Bothans and to restore the crew to normal. ( ) Later that year, Voyager found a second Ocampa colony in a second array under the guidance of Suspiria, the Caretaker's female counterpart. These Ocampa had advanced telepathic abilities and their leader, , tutored her while secretly plotting with Suspiria to take Voyager. When she demonstrated her new skills to Tuvok, she accidentally boiled the water in his body and he was severely injured. Nevertheless, he said she should continue her training under Tanis, who told Kes to join them. Tanis encouraged her to pursue destructive abilities, inducing her to incinerate the plants in hydroponics. When Suspiria attacked the crew in revenge for the Caretaker's death, Kes attacked Tanis telepathically and Janeway deployed a non-lethal toxin to disable her. Being shown mercy caused Suspiria to leave with Tanis; his departure caused Kes' power to return to its previous level. She was disturbed by the harm she did with her enhanced abilities; Tuvok told her that she must learn to control, rather than fear, such impulses. ( ) Voyager passed through a divergence field that caused all sensor readings to double and every particle on the ship, except antimatter, to duplicate forming a second Voyager and crew. The field caused extensive damage to the first Voyager. Kes vanished in a mysterious void, Harry Kim was sucked out into space and Samantha Wildman's baby died. Kes led Janeway back to the void to take her back to her ship. When the Vidiians attacked, they killed the duplicate Kes and they themselves were destroyed when the duplicate Voyager self-destructed, but not before Kim returned with Wildman's baby to the other Voyager. ( ) Kes, along with the rest of the crew, was marooned on Hanon IV after the Kazon had captured the ship. She was captured by the primitive tribe on the planet who were amazed at her blond hair and light skin. Chakotay later rescued her. ( ) The last year on Voyager On a visit to the Nechani homeworld, Kes was struck by an energy burst that put her into a coma. She had wandered into a sanctuary into which only monks were allowed. She was saved by Janeway, who went through a series of tests of faith. ( ) One of the most troubling episodes in Kes' life occurred in 2373, when her body was taken over by the Ilari, Tieran. Although he found her physically weak, he discovered that he was able to put her budding psychokinetic abilities to dangerous uses and grew fond of her body. For the first few days, he concealed his presence and even ended Kes' relationship with Neelix. After killing the Autarch's representative and Ensign Martin, he returned to Ilari and staged a coup, killing the ruling autarch. During the next few days, Kes fought him mentally, causing increasingly erratic behavior. She even surfaced at one point, with the help of Tuvok, but she was unable to remove Tieran's influence. As a civil war broke out on the planet, the crew of Voyager rescued Kes but failed to prevent Tieran from taking Ameron as a new host, although he was driven out of Ameron and destroyed a short time later. Kes found the experience difficult to comprehend and blamed herself for the high death toll. It was clear that her time with Tieran had shaken her badly. ( ) Possibly as a result of her experience with Tieran, Kes began to question her continued presence on Voyager. She chose not to restart her relationship with Neelix and began to pursue other relationships instead. The first of these was with a Mikhal Traveler named Zahir. She fell in love with Zahir during a stay at one of their outposts, and seriously considered his offer to explore space with him rather than stay on Voyager. Meanwhile, The Doctor, who was experimenting with his matrix, caused an evil side to emerge. He became jealous of her suitor, attacked Zahir, and kidnapped Kes. During their time together, Kes realized that the "dark Doctor" was not truly evil; despite his claims that all organics were pathetic, he seemed to care for Kes in a twisted manner. Despite this, when cornered by an away team searching for them, rather than be captured, the 'dark Doctor' jumped off a cliff with Kes. They were saved by the transporter beam as the dark subroutines in The Doctor's program finally collapsed, resulting in him being back to normal when he returned to Voyager. Eventually, she decided to remain with her friends. ( ) for timing reasons.}} Leaving the ship A few weeks later, Voyager entered the core space of the Borg and stumbled across the Borg-Species 8472 War. As a result of the telepathic nature of Species 8472, Kes began to experience visions of the future, and later began to communicate with the race. When they realized her nature, Species 8472 began reading Kes' memories. The communications ceased when the species retreated from the Delta Quadrant. ( ) ]] Only a few days later, Kes began to undergo a massive surge in her mental powers. Although it was theorized that the exposure to Species 8472 caused these changes, there was little evidence for this. For whatever reason, Kes became telekinetic and was able to carry out delicate surgical procedures using only her mind. Unfortunately, she rapidly started to destabilize at the subatomic level and was causing massive damage to Voyager as a result. Taking a shuttle, she left the ship to explore her new condition and, as she left the corporeal world behind, pushed Voyager out of Borg space, 9,500 light years closer to Earth, as a parting gift. ( ) Return to Voyager In the original sequence of events in 2376, Voyager received a distress call from a small ship. Sensors revealed that the ship had one Ocampan lifeform on board. It was an aged Kes, who requested to be beamed aboard Voyager. When Janeway questioned her motives, Kes responded by ramming Voyager with her ship and boarding the Starfleet vessel. In her old age, Kes had forgotten she had chosen to leave Voyager and thought the crew had abandoned her when she had become too troublesome. Subsequently, she hunted down Voyager, seeking revenge. She made her way to engineering, using her powers to cause extensive damage along the way. When she reached engineering, Kes murdered B'Elanna Torres and used the warp core's energy to enhance her powers and travel back to 2371, shortly after Voyager had become trapped in the Delta Quadrant. She attempted to prevent her younger self from developing her powers, making a deal with the Vidiians to attack and capture the ship, while taking the younger Kes back to Ocampa. This attempt was thwarted by Captain Janeway, who killed the older Kes when she was knocked off-balance during a Vidiian attack. She and Tuvok subsequently explained the situation to Kes of the present, who recorded a hologram that would dissuade the Kes of 2376 from making the time jump. In the new version of 2376, Kes once again assaulted the ship, but Janeway was able to divert the crew from Kes's path, minimizing the damage she inflicted on the ship. When she reached engineering, she found the warp core off-line. A hologram that Kes had recorded of herself before leaving Voyager was activated. The holographic image reminded her that she was responsible for her own fate. Kes responded emotionally and ceased hostilities. Janeway offered her a place on the crew but she refused, opting instead to return to her homeworld. ( ) Telepathic abilities Tuvok and Chakotay were attacked by an alien while returning from an away mission. After the two were beamed aboard, strange things started happening to the ship, with different crewmembers implicated as the culprits. Kes informed Janeway that she sensed an alien on board. Tuvok attempted a mind meld with her to help with her telepathic abilities in order to find the alien. It ended in failure when both were disabled by an energy surge like the one that hit Tuvok and Chakotay (although, this was later revealed to be a lie; in reality, Kes had been knocked out by Tuvok, who was possessed by an alien being at the time). ( ) ]] Kes' native telepathic powers continued to grow during her time in space, and she received training from Tuvok to control her powers. When Voyager encountered another group of Ocampa and the entity Suspiria, Kes' powers increased so fast that she began to lose control of them, incinerating the hydroponics bay and nearly killing Tuvok due to her new power of pyrokinesis. Fortunately, she saw how twisted these Ocampa had become and used her powers to fight them off. With the escape of Suspiria, her powers returned to their normal levels. ( ) In an artificially-created hallucination, it was Kes who telepathically sensed that Janeway's spirit was still present on Voyager, but attempts by Tuvok and Kes to make contact with her failed. Janeway soon learned that she was simply being pursued by an alien who was trying to convince her that she was dead and wanted her energy to feed off. ( ) At the end of the year during the battle with the Borg and Species 8472, she could sense Species 8472. She warned an away team that they are about to be attacked by the aliens, and was able to determine that Species 8472 was planning an invasion of the Delta Quadrant. ( ) Personal relationships Romance Neelix Although initially her relationship with Neelix was a romantic one, it seemed to cool during the trip on Voyager. Neelix was the first non-Ocampa that Kes met and she was enthralled with the stories he told about his adventures. Her friendly behavior with Paris initially caused a confrontation between Neelix and Paris, the former being driven by a somewhat irrational jealousy towards the latter. While stranded together on a planet termed "Planet Hell" after a shuttle crash, they resolved their differences and began a solid friendship. Kes was aggravated by Neelix's jealousy and hurt by the implication that he didn't trust her or would suspect her friends of getting between them. ( ) During late 2372, Kes suffered a major personal loss after a transporter accident claimed the lives Neelix and Tuvok. In their place was a new combined entity that called itself Tuvix and declared its love for Kes. Though deeply troubled by the loss and by this declaration of love, she worked hard to become friends with Tuvix. When Captain Janeway and The Doctor found a method of separating him, Tuvix asked Kes to intercede in an effort to save his own existence. Ultimately, Kes asked the opposite, giving in to her desperation to have Neelix and Tuvok back. ( ) Alien creatures that attached to Voyager had strange effects on Kes. She became prematurely fertile, which Ocampa do only once in a lifetime. If she ever wanted a baby she had to conceive while she was in this cycle. Neelix's reluctance to start a family upset Kes because she had always assumed she would have a child someday; Neelix, with his itinerant lifestyle, had never seriously considered the possibility. However, Kes began questioning her own readiness to become a parent even as Neelix came around to the idea. The elogium ended when the creatures were returned to their mother and The Doctor hypothesized that Kes would be able to reenter the elogium at the normal time. ( ) Following her possession by Tieran, Kes and Neelix broke up; although this was initially caused by Tieran, it has been speculated that Tieran was partially motivated by Kes' own subconscious desires, explaining why she never got back together with the Talaxian. Despite this, the two remained close friends. Neelix later joked that Kes broke up with him because of his cooking. ( ) Zahir Kes encountered Zahir, one of the Mikhal Travelers, while visiting their outpost in 2373. Clearly attracted by his youthful good looks, intelligence, sensitivity and bravery, she spent much time with him – including a moonlit walk and at least one shared kiss – to the detriment of her duties aboard Voyager. Zahir was equally attracted to Kes and invited her to travel with him aboard his ship for a few weeks, and initially she accepted his offer despite concerns on the part of Captain Janeway, who reminded Kes of her obligations as Voyager's assistant medical officer, and Lieutenant Tuvok, who questioned Zahir's choice of route and his apparently reckless approach towards travel. Zahir assured Tuvok that, having fallen in love with Kes, he considered her safety on the trip to be of paramount importance. The trip was postponed when Zahir was attacked and seriously injured by The Doctor's evil alter ego. Kes remained at Zahir's side throughout his initial convalescence, showing great concern; shortly afterwards, when she was kidnapped by the malfunctioning Doctor, Zahir assisted Chakotay and Tuvok in their rescue efforts. Having been rescued, Kes decided to remain with Voyager as it continued on its journey home. ( ) Friendships The Doctor From the start, Kes treated The Doctor as an individual rather than a tool and encouraged others to do the same. She volunteered to be his assistant after he performed a lifesaving procedure on Neelix and was quickly disturbed by the way the rest of the crew treated him. She did much to improve his ability to relate to the crew and advocated on his behalf to Captain Janeway. At times, her help could be devious; when he gave himself a 29-hour Levodian flu, she secretly extended the length of the subroutine to give him empathy for the sense of helplessness and anxiety that real patients have. ( ) Kes' efforts evidently had a powerful effect on him; when his program suffered damage and he began to hallucinate that he was his creator, Dr. Lewis Zimmerman, his hallucination included a Human Kes as his wife. Only the real Kes was aware of this, deciding to keep it between the two of them in case Neelix became jealous. ( ) Over time, The Doctor and Kes gradually settled into an almost father-daughter role, with The Doctor teaching Kes as a medical assistant. Kes also trusted The Doctor enough to perform the role of her father in the rolissisin, a foot massage that was a precursor to the mating ritual, commonly marking the change in relationship between father and child as the child became a parent herself. ( ) When a Vidiian scientist, Danara Pel, was beamed onto Voyager dying from the Phage, he transferred her synaptic pattern to a holobuffer and created a holographic body for her without the ravages of the Phage. Kes encouraged The Doctor to tell Pel about his feelings for her, and she subsequently worked with Tom Paris to set The Doctor and Pel up on a date in the holodeck. ( ) The next year Kes helped save The Doctor's matrix when, due to his program having been active for far longer than it was designed for, he began to lose his memories and skills as a doctor. After Torres activated a hologram of Dr. Lewis Zimmerman, he explained that The Doctor had been online too long and was deteriorating. Kes persuaded Dr. Zimmerman to graft his matrix onto The Doctor, restoring his mental capabilities. ( ) Although Kes served as The Doctor's mentor in becoming an individual, he also considered her to be in need of guidance and could be resentful when her attention was distracted from helping him. When she became distracted by her mutual attraction with Zahir, The Doctor was rude and abrupt out of a fear that she would abandon him. When The Doctor's program developed a secondary, evil personality, the 'Dark Doctor' still appeared to care for Kes in a twisted fashion. He tried to kill Zahir because he wanted Kes to remain on the ship, but he also claimed, when he kidnapped her, that she needed his help due to her naiveté. ( ) Tom Paris As Kes' role on the crew developed, Tom Paris began to develop feelings for her; in an alternate future, he admitted that he'd had a crush on her from the moment she joined the crew. Paris introduced her to new forms of food and drink, including spinach juice (with a touch of pear) which she enjoyed. ( ) At her second birthday party, he sacrificed two weeks' worth of replicator rations to give her a beautiful locket as a present. ( ) To Tom's consternation, his feelings for her grew when he became her flight instructor, prompting a brief conflict between him and Neelix, but the two of them resolved their differences after saving an alien infant together. ( ) Kes and Paris were also closely involved in helping The Doctor cope with relationships; the two of them helped The Doctor arrange a date with Danara Pel, a Vidiian The Doctor had developed feelings for. When Paris left the ship as part of a ploy to expose a Kazon spy, Kes was one of the three people who came to say goodbye to him directly. ( ) In an alternate future, Kes and Paris married during the "Year of Hell" conflict, following the death of B'Elanna Torres. They had a daughter, Linnis Paris, who married Harry Kim and had a son called Andrew Kim. This timeline was erased when exposure to temporal radiation sent Kes traveling back in time from the moment of her death until she was cured of the radiation during her return to her third year on the ship, and any feelings she may have developed for Paris in the course of her jumps were never fully explored before she finally departed the ship. ( ) Tuvok Tuvok became Kes' mentor and tutor in establishing her mental abilities. He used mind melds in order to teach her to control her powers, but sometimes became "frustrated" (as much as any Vulcan could) with her "emotional outbursts", such as giggling, when she used her abilities. Nevertheless, they were close companions and Tuvok grew to respect her. When she was disturbed by the dark turn her abilities took under the influence of Tanis and Suspiria, Tuvok understood because of the violent impulses he carried and told her that the way to cope with it was to control it rather than fear it. ( ) Kes relied on Tuvok's steady guidance and was deeply conflicted by the creation of Tuvix. Without his spiritual guidance or Neelix's emotional support she had nobody to help her and asked Janeway to separate them. Later, when Kes was taken over by the warlord Tieran, Tuvok attempted to help her break his control using a mindmeld. Tieran attempted to seduce him with Kes' body but he denied ever having such feelings for his student. ( ) When Kes considered leaving the ship for a few weeks with Zahir, Tuvok met with the man privately to express his concern over Zahir's travel plan. He also reminded Kes not to forget her duties, although he did not discourage the relationship itself. ( ) Tuvok was alarmed by the sudden surge in Kes' powers and believed it would be dangerous for her to fully express them, particularly when she began seeing and altering matter on a subatomic level. As she began to warp the structure of the ship itself, Tuvok attempted unsuccessfully to ground her through a mindmeld and it became necessary for her to leave the ship. After her departure and "gift" to Voyager, Tuvok dressed in traditional Vulcan robes and lit his meditation candle in the window in honor of her. ( ) Kathryn Janeway As the captain of Voyager, Kes came to see Janeway as a kind of mother figure, with Janeway reciprocating this affection. During the premature elogium, Kes would only speak to Janeway after barricading herself in Sickbay. ( ) Janeway shared Kes' feeling that she needed to live her brief life to the fullest. Despite Kes' youth, Janeway readily listened to her advice and considered her input valuable enough to include her in staff meetings. When Janeway experienced an illusory experience of her own death, her first thought was to try and provoke a response from Kes' telepathic abilities. The inability of "Kes" to sense her presence made her think she might really be dead. ( ) Janeway also had the most positive reaction to the relationship with Zahir. Although she told Kes to think over the decision carefully, she understood Kes' desire to have varied and complicated experiences in her life. ( ) When Kes decided to leave Voyager, she exchanged an emotional hug with Janeway before she left ( ). Although forced to kill a future version of Kes who had become warped with rage and grief since leaving the ship, when she 'caught up' with the timeframe where that future Kes had travelled back from, Janeway took steps to prevent herself having to go through such an experience again, asking Kes not to force her to kill her a second time ( ). Alternate Kes Holograms Kes was holographically duplicated at least three times: *Recreations of crew members from Voyager and the Jupiter Station Holoprogramming Center were seen by The Doctor during a holographic malfunction in 2371. This simulation, or daydream, contained a Human Kes who was married to Lewis Zimmerman. ( ) *The entire crew of Voyager was recreated by Tuvok from his Insurrection Alpha program, including Kes. ( ) *Janeway and Tuvok created a holographic recording of Kes in 2371 after encountering her future self from 2376, using the hologram when the future Kes attacked Voyager in order to convince the older Kes to stand down by reminding her of her original reasons for travelling with Voyager. ( ) Alternate realities and timelines In one possible timeline, Voyager was badly damaged during the "Year of Hell" conflict with the Krenim and the crew were exposed to chronitons. Kes lived through these events and eventually married Tom Paris, Torres having died during the conflict. They had a daughter together called Linnis who, like her mother, grew up very rapidly. Linnis then married Harry Kim, giving Kes a grandson, Andrew Kim. Eventually, Kes passed nine years of age and began aging rapidly as she entered the morilogium, the final phase of Ocampan life. To save her, The Doctor placed her in a bio-temporal chamber in an attempt to make her cells younger. This procedure reactivated the dormant chronitons and the resulting temporal destabilization sent Kes back along her timeline, altering it along the way as she discussed her memories of the future. The effect was halted in late 2373 when The Doctor used antichronitons to stabilize Kes; in her previous jump she had taken energy readings of the torpedo that had infected her, allowing The Doctor to work out a means of countering her infection. Over the next few days, her two sets of memories (one set from the past, up to 2373; and one set from the future, back from 2379) became a single coherent set. As a result of her experience, Kes was able to warn Captain Janeway of the danger posed by the Krenim. ( ) Appendices Appearances * VOY; all episodes through (plus ) except for: ** ** Background information Kes was played by actress Jennifer Lien. Janna Michaels played the young Kes in the episode . The infant Kes in the latter-mentioned episode was a live baby. The "double" Kes in was played by photo double and stand-in Amy Kate Connolly. An early production name for Kes was Dah. ( text commentary; A Vision of the Future - Star Trek: Voyager) In the first draft script for , Kes was described thus; "She has a dazzling, ethereal beauty, waifish and fragile. But Kes is not frail: there is a dignity – her bearing, an alertness in her look, that suggests a being of powerful intelligence." A runner-up for the role of Kes was Jennifer Gatti. (Captains' Logs Supplemental - The Unauthorized Guide to the New Trek Voyages, p. 156) Portraying Kes was highly enjoyable for Jennifer Lien. On , she said, "It's a joy to pretend to be this extraordinary creature, so open and everything so new. No sort of cynicism or precociousness or pretentiousness or sarcasm; none of the usual young, female qualities. It's good, it's very good." ("Cast Reflections: Season One", VOY Season 1 DVD special features) Jennifer Lien wore short-haired wigs as Kes until midway through the third season, when she reverted to using her own long, blonde hair. This was seen for the first time in . The wigs were initially used to give Kes a more elfin look, but the revert to using Lien's own hair in part was to give Kes a more grown-up look, and in part to prevent Lien from having to always wear the Ocampan ears. The decision to lose Kes as a main character was, according to Executive Producers Rick Berman and Jeri Taylor, simply because the character had not seemed to be working successfully, despite several attempts to make the character work. (Braving the Unknown: Season Four, VOY Season 4 DVD) Berman also cited one particular relationship as a certain stumbling block. "There was a relationship with Neelix that didn't work out that well," he said. ( ) According to Taylor, the executives of Paramount Pictures were also involved in the decision to lose Kes from the series. "The studio felt that we had too many characters," she explained. (Cinefantastique, Vol. 29, No. 6/7, p. 113) This was especially the case, in light of the decision to introduce Seven of Nine into the series. Berman noted that the decision to lose Kes as a main character was "simultaneous" with the decision to introduce Seven. (Braving the Unknown: Season Four, VOY Season 4 DVD) Berman also stated, "Rather than adding another new character to our existing cast, we decided to replace one because we had so many people to start with." ( ) Concluded Taylor, "In season 3 or 4 of a series, very often people go and people come, so it wasn't that unexpected an event." (Braving the Unknown: Season Four, VOY Season 4 DVD) Despite this, some of the series' writing staff was regretful about the character leaving. Joe Menosky remarked, "It was unfortunate that Kes had to be kissed off." (Cinefantastique, Vol. 30, No. 9/10, p. 78) Kenneth Biller similarly remembered, "I was a little bit regretful when Kes left the show, because I thought she was an interesting character to write for – from a science fiction standpoint – because she had certain... she had telepathic abilities, she had this very compressed lifespan, she had things about her character that often lent themselves to interesting storytelling .... We lost something in losing the Kes character." (Braving the Unknown: Season Four, VOY Season 4 DVD) Jeri Taylor was another writing staffer who expressed unhappiness about Kes' departure, noting, "I was very sorry to lose her." ( ) Co-producer Brannon Braga was a little bit more harsh on himself and his creative staff, when he stated at the 2014 VegasCon, "To my recollection it was a creative decision and it was failure of imagination on the writers' part. We were running out of things to do with Kes. We had to make room in the budget for a new character in the cast so there was a pragmatic reason but it was primarily a creative decision." It is not known what became of Kes after the final encounter she had with Voyager in . Given her elderly appearance and the normal Ocampan lifespan of nine years, it can be presumed that she passed away in or just before 2379 and thus shortly after Voyager s return to the Alpha Quadrant, although it is possible that she found a way to prolong her life through her considerably advanced mental abilities. Her "Tieran" costume from the third season episode was later sold off at the Profiles in History auction. Apocrypha In the Voyager trilogy Dark Matters, a version of Kes appears throughout the novel to gather the mutated dark matter that is the cause of the current crisis, initially known as the 'Entity' as she has lost specific knowledge of her past identity through ascending to her new level of existence until she regains it while visiting some of Voyager s past destinations. At the conclusion of the novel, she contemplates making contact with the crew, but is warned by one of the Shepherds- a race assisting Voyager in this crisis- that she is actually an alternate version of the Kes that the crew are familiar with, as this Kes never experienced the events of Fury, and decides not to make direct contact with this Voyager, although Tuvok briefly senses her presence before she departs. In the Voyager novel String Theory , Kes was called to Ocampa's distant past to help The Doctor and Q oversee the birth of an Ocampa/Nacene hybrid; the Ocampan mother lacked the life energy to carry the child to term, so Kes 'merged' with the woman to act as a kind of surrogate. This also revealed that the Kes who attacked Voyager in was not actually the future Kes, but was instead the personification of the anger and rage in Kes' soul, created when she was forced to separate herself from the Ocampan with whom she had merged while fighting a rogue Nacene. As a result of the improper separation, Kes' "dark side" merged with the body of the Ocampan, although the spirit of the Ocampan herself passed on peacefully. Kes subsequently returned to Ocampa, where she and the hybrid were able to bring rain to the planet once more. In the Voyager short story "Restoration", Kes used her newly-returned powers in 2377 to regenerate Ocampa's energies, returning the planet to a blissful and fertile state with the atmosphere restored, but killing her in the process. She is confirmed to still be alive in the novel The Eternal Tide, where she works with Q's son to restore Janeway to life after she is assimilated by the Borg, Q helping Janeway restore her body while Kes helps her repair the damage that she had suffered prior to death so that Janeway is restored to her most 'perfect' state. Her mirror universe counterpart appeared in the novella The Mirror-Scaled Serpent, the short story "Bitter Fruit" contained in the anthology Shards and Shadows and the novel Rise Like Lions. External links * * * ca:Kes de:Kes es:Kes fr:Kes nl:Kes pl:Kes pt:Kes sr:Кес Category:Ocampa Category:Non-corporeals Category:USS Voyager personnel Category:Nurses Category:Medical practitioners